Restaurants and other food service business prepare and serve meals to paying customers. During this preparation and tableside service numerous employees must come into close contact with the food and customers. In recent years, there has been an increased awareness and concern for preventing contamination or infection of the customers and their food through direct transmission of contagions from the food service personnel.
These contagions typically take the form of airborne pathogens, infectious aerosols, and/or particulate matter. Potentially infectious aerosols having airborne liquid and, at times, solid particles can be created through exhalation and/or talking.
Medical personnel typically wear disposable face masks which envelope and are tied around the nose and mouth of the wearer and/or full face shields to prevent contamination of their patient (and potentially the wearer). These masks and face shields, however, are not practical for food service personnel as they typically muffle the wearer's voice. In a medical setting, the muffling effect is negated due to the relative quiet of the surroundings and any important communication can be exclaimed loudly.
In addition, to muffed sounds the wearer face can become hot and uncomfortable due to exhaling warm air and the moisture that builds up in the mask. In a restaurant, uncontrolled background noise in present and customers are not expecting to be loudly spoken-to by the wait staff. Additionally, while relatively inexpensive in relation to their benefits in a medical setting, continually replacing face masks would likely be cost prohibitive for a food service setting when their use would be as much to assure the customer that their well-being is important to the restaurateur as it is as an actual prophylactic against pathogens. Similarly, while full face shields are typically reusable, their outward appearance and the overly sterile impression created by such an intrusive barrier between the restaurant employees and the customers would likely be off-putting to the customers.
The prior art includes examples of mouth covering devices. A first of these is set forth in Poindexter, US 2008/0304690, which teaches a mouth shield for a microphone headset having a rigid arcuate frame removably attachable to the mouthpiece holder of a microphone headset by a clasping means. The shield includes air vent apertures. An optional removable foam insert may be adhesively attached to an inner side of the shield to catch saliva while speaking. The shield precludes external visibility of lips while speaking and interference with audibility caused by wind and other adverse weather conditions.
A sports apparatus for covering a user's mouth is depicted in US 2008/0134402 to Bailey, which teaches a shield member. A securing device is attached at a first end thereof to a back side of the shield member at a predetermined location thereon. A second predetermined end of the securing means is removably securable to a boom microphone arm extending from a user's audio headset communication apparatus to a space in front of a mouth of such user such that when the shield member is secured to such boom microphone arm such user's mouth will be entirely hidden by the shield member.
Ward, US 2008/0089546, teaches a microphone shield plate, a shield plate arm connected at a first end therefor to the microphone shield plate, and a means for attaching a second end of the shield plate arm to a microphone headset in a manner which at least partially obscures an ability to view the headset user's mouth while speaking into the headset.
Parda, US 2010/0034412, teaches a lip shield or block that is attachable to a microphone and is sized to block or shield the lips of the user from being viewed by third parties when speaking into the microphone. Additional examples of attachable headgear, such as used with a ball cap, include each of the combination hat and headset device of Bronnikov 2002/0131616 and the headgear with attachable whistle shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,504,943, to Han.
The teachings of the prior art aside, there remains a need for a device that will provide both a degree of protection from transmission of disease from the food service personnel to customers through airborne pathogens, while remaining unobtrusive both visually and in relation to verbal communication. Preferably such a device would be reusable to reduce the cost.